


You Can't Have it Both Ways

by duc



Series: We Need to Talk [3]
Category: Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Gender Issues, M/M, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, some transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 07:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duc/pseuds/duc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a public figure is hard, being a trans public figure transitioning is harder.</p><p>Also, gender is complicated</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can't Have it Both Ways

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: tsukinofaerii  
> Fandom: Marvel Comics  
> Pairing/characters: Tony/Steve,Avengers assemble cast  
> Rating: PG:13  
> Prompt: Any fandom, any character, a trans* character deals with the fact that they don't always like or care to follow the gender *roles* associated with their gender.
> 
> Written for this year's Queer_Fest

That feels better, marginally.”

Tony stepped out of the shower and stretched his shoulder carefully, mindful of the healing sprain, while steam swirled around the master bathroom. His fingers grasped for the towel on the rack. Once his fingers touched it he wrapped it around himself and started to dry his hair with a sigh. It was one of those weeks. Not the kind of crazy weeks where the Avengers were running around stopping godlike entities bent on destroying the world. No, it was the kind of week that came _after_ the doomsday plan.

The kind of week where he was shackled to his desk at the office  working through the backlog of stuff that had gotten pushed aside, tried to respect looming deadlines and sucked up to offended business partners not used to being ignored even if it was to prevent Manhattan from being blown to bits with them in it.

It was the kind of week where his body was healing, the adrenaline long gone and the pain a constant companion making its presence known with dull aches and sudden spikes whenever he made a wrong movement.

And frankly, Tony sometimes thought those weeks were worse than the doomsday weeks.

To top it off, it had been either raining or about to rain since last Thursday. It was now Wednesday. So everything was miserable and not even a long hot shower could cheer him up.

He whipped the mirror off with one hand, trying to decide if he wanted to take his muscle relaxants, rotating his shoulder gingerly rewarded him with a sharp pain. “Muscle relaxant it is.”

Steve had been the last on to touch them (for some reason he seemed to think Tony was untrustworthy when it came to following the doctor’s order) so he had no idea where it had ended up (Steve and Tony seemed to follow totally different logic when it came to organising). But chances were it was in the cupboard so he opened it and started rooting for the bottle.

He wasn’t careful and knocked something over. It fell on the bathroom floor with a clank but thankfully didn’t break. Cursing, Tony bent to pick it up and came up with a bottle of nail polish, fire engine red.

“Huh,” he said. Earlier frustration gone as he looked at the label. “I completely forgot I still had those.”

Back when he still had been living as a girl (that was the correct term, right? Tony wasn’t as up on the literature as he should have been sometimes) painting his nails every once in a while had been one of the very few “feminine” things he had done of his own free will. He liked it, liked the flashes of bright color every time he looked at his hands, even if he had short stubby nails and never managed to keep a manicure intact for more than a few days --or even a few hours, but his record was 4 days so he was sticking to days. He loved being pampered and watching the beauticians freak over the state of his hands. Once, the girl had honest to god _fainted_ when she has noticed he was missing a fingernail, (Here was a valuable life lesson: always check that pieces of heavy machinery are secure _before_ putting a hand - or any limb, really- under it).

Chuckling at the memory, Tony put the bottle back on its shelf, located his meds and swallowed the prescribed two pills. He was closing the cabinet door when his eyes fell on the nail polish again. After a few seconds of reflection he grabbed it again and looked for one of the other bottle he was pretty sure was still there.

“Yup,” he said, holding the new bottle in front of his eyes. “Yukon Gold.” He slammed the door shut and walked out of the bathroom whistling. This could be just what he needed to cheer himself up.

 

 

After a quick detour by their room to grab his comfy jeans and one of Steve’s T-shirts he dropped into the living room’s couch and deposited his haul on the coffee table. Logan, who had been sprawled in the middle, grunted when Tony’s knees and elbows knocked into him.

“Jesus, Stark, go ahead, take all the space you want.”

“This couch is meant for at least three people so stop hogging and scoot over, “ he shot back, picking up the Yukon Gold and opening the bottle.

Logan scrunched up his face. “And here I thought I would be rid of that goddamn fucking smell when I left the teenage girls behind at Xavier’s. What the hell, Stark?”

Tony rolled his eyes and ignored him in favor of carefully painting his big toe. Logan grumbled some more and lit a cigar, which Tony had come to recognize-- or well, _Steve_ had come to recognize and then told Tony-- he tended to do to overpower things his enhanced sense of smell found offensive.  Logan forgot him quickly though, when Peter came in and changed the channel from Logan’s precious Hockey game to a _Leverage_ marathon. During the ensuing scuffle, Tony started to paint the second toe red. People gradually began to fill the room.

Tony was done with the toes and on to the fingers when the quick glances Jessica Jones and Luke kept shooting him instead of watching _Inglorious Basterds_ (the compromise) became too much for him-- not to mention the double takes he was pretty sure Peter and Carol had done when they had come in.

“What?” he finally asked Peter who had the misfortune to have been staring right at that moment.

Peter jumped and looked away. “Well…” he started. “It’s just that… I thought that now that you…” He trailed off looking at Tony’s face and then at his half painted hand.

_Oh._

right. Now that he was transitioning, now that he was presenting as male 24/7. Painting his nails was obviously sending mixed messages, even to the rest of the Avengers. He hadn’t thought of that.

Quickly he dug the rag he had left in his jean pocket at some point and whipped the still liquid polish from his fingers before going to get the remover for the rest..

 

 

Sometimes, when you learned a new concept, you ended up seeing it everywhere. Like you learn a shiny new formula and suddenly it’s in the article you have to read for your physic class and then two days later it’s exactly what you need for computer lab and so on and so forth. The week that followed the “nail polish incident” as Tony referred to it, went like this:

 

 

The next day:

Tony was out for lunch at that deli four blocks down with the amazing sandwiches and a guy flat out elbowed him out of the line to take his place.

“Hey! Excuse me?” he said, sliding between the asshole and the woman in line in front of them. “I was there.”

And now you’re over there,” The guy grunted, pointing behind him with his thumb. Then, he drew himself to his full size (6”1, 6”2 tops, woohoo!) and tried to stare Tony down. In his defense, he was what would have been considered big by anyone who hadn’t spent most of their adult life living with Captain America and Thor (and She-Hulk, and Beast, and…).

Tony smirked. “No, no, no. Did you cut class in kindergarten? This is not how it works. When you come in, you go stand behind the one who arrived before you and you wait your turn. I was there first, ergo…”

“Look here boy…”

Yeah, like the guy was more than four or five years older than him. Extremis was taking it’s sweet time bringing his hormone levels to average man standard,  he now passed as male more easily, but his features were still too feminine for him to look older than 20.

“…I don’t have the time to argue with a kid. I’m a busy man. An important man…”

“And colorblind.” Tony snarked, more to get him to shut up than anything else.

“What?!”

“really? An orange and purple power tie? With a navy suit? Where on Earth did you get the idea that those go together? I mean, from here your closet looks to be mired in the 90s-- which is about when power ties went out of fashion, by the way-- but even then I didn’t think that was a thing.”

And Mister Big Busy Man was taken aback and gapping like a fish for like half a minute, which was nice. He recovered quickly and looked at Tony up and down with an expression of even bigger disdain-if that was possible. It almost made Tony want to look at himself, to see if something had happened to his clothe in the time it had taken him to get from his office to the deli.

“Care a lot about _fashion_ , do you?”  He said fashion as if the word had had four letters and grabbed tony by the lapel of his suit jacket. “Why don’t you go window shopping then, girlie? And leave hard working men enjoy their lunch in peace.” 

He started to shove but Tony put his hand on his wrist and dug his fingers into the pressure point situated there. Mister Hard Working man doubled over.

“ _You_ ’re the one who came here and disturbed everyone’s lunch.  Don’t come crying when it turns out you can’t bully your way around.” He twisted the wrist like Steve had shown him years ago and pushed, sending the man against one of the table.

Hard Working Man looked like he would like to punch Tony’s lights out, but obviously he liked _not_ getting his ass kicked by Tony’s 5’8” girlie self even more because he left in a huff. The woman in front of him was looking at him when Tony turned his attention back toward the counter and their eyes met.

“Nice,” she said smiling at him.

“Really?”

“Oh yeah, God, what an asshole.”

Tony smiled back and they shared a nice moment about dealing with entitled assholes, but Tony’s heart wasn’t in it. Two months ago-- hell, even yesterday-- he would have been wringing the situation for all it was worth, but today a good half of Tony’s brain was busy reviewing the scene from all angle was he was making small talk with the lady.

It wasn’t that he gave a fuck about what people thought of him-- least of all bullying jerks-- but he was trying to understand why, of all the slurs available to him, the guy had chosen to call him girlie.

Had he realized Tony was Trans? No. no startle, no double take. They always startled or did double takes or both. Then _why?_   Tony turned it around and around in his head, trying to understand. Fashion. He had said something scornful about liking fashion and going shopping, and he had glared at his clothes.

Tony blinked. Fashion was considered more feminine than masculine but there was nothing feminine in his clothing. So he cared a bit more about fit and trend than big Busy Man, that couldn’t be it could it?

 

 

 ~~The day after that~~ (too long) Friday:

About half of the team and significant others were waiting for a show to resume. They didn’t know what it was about, beyond the fact that it was one of those stupid talk show and they had heard Tony’s name just before it cut to commercial break. It probably proved they all had latent masochistic tendencies, but when they heard mentions of themselves in the media they tended to watch/read it. They didn’t seek it out (they weren’t that far gone…usually) but if they happened upon it they didn’t avoid it either so they had stopped channel surfing and settled in for the train wreck.

The guest of the day was a distinguished gentleman with the wireframe glasses and tweed jacket associated with the “expert” … And apparently he was an evolutionary psychologist who was lecturing on the male and female brain. Tony’s transition was still somewhat fresh in the media so of course the host had asked about “transsexual people like Tony Stark”.

“This is a very interesting question,” the man, doctor Becker, or Barret or something, said, smiling pleasantly at the camera. “Tony Stark as certainly shown interest, and exceled, in some fairly traditional masculine pursuits: hard sciences, business, being a… warrior, if you’ll forgive me the archaic expression. Soldier does not suit in this case. But if you look at ‘his’ behavior…”

Tony narrowed his eyes. Was it just him or had the good doctor put an emphasis on the “his”?

“…’he’ ehxibits patterns that are usually considered feminine.”

“Really?” the host asked, leaning forward with all the appearance of the captivated. “How so?”

“Well, there are several things but in my opinion, the biggest marker is the way ‘he’ goes about obtaining what ‘he’ wants…”

It wasn’t Tony.

“… Whereas the traditional masculine model is to use ones strength of personality to make people do what one wants them to do, to take charge of the situation…”

“The proverbial alpha male” The host proposed.

“Exactly. Tony Stark’s modus operandi is much softer, gentler…”

“Softer?” Tony snorted incredulously. “Here goes all the times I got called a ball busting bitch.”

“Don’t worry,” Jessica Drew patted his thigh reassuringly. “You’re still a first class bastard.”

“...Tony Stark relies on charm. He will bribe, sweet talk and cajole you into getting what he wants. It’s...”

“Sure,” Carol said, lifting her nose from her Tom Clancy novel. “If he can’t get away with just doing it behind your back.”

“…almost like seduction.” The host was saying.

“It is. I absolutely believe that it is. Oh it’s not sexual,” the doctor generously allowed. "But it is a form of seduction none the less.”

They didn’t say anything interesting after that and soon the show cut to commercials again. The Avengers all stayed staring at the screen in a state of WTF which strength varied depending on the individual.

 

 

Monday of the following week, disgustingly early:

“You have a lot of female friends, don’t you?” Asked Colonel Mackenzie, the Initiative’s army liaison, after crossing Jan in the corridor.

Maybe it was the week he had had, but Tony suddenly read a wealth of insinuations in that little comment.

 

 

Wednesday again (the straw that broke the camel’s back):

Tony knew better than to take anything the tabloids printed to heart; they made money out of being sensational, outrageous and inaccurate. The tabloids, if viewed, should only be used as comedy fodder. But even Tony with his great experience could not help the outraged yelp of indignation at their latest attempt at “journalism”.

In front of his eyes, Extremis displayed the morning cover of _Hello Star_. There, in all its high resolution glory, was a picture of Tony and Steve. Steve’s arms were around Tony’s mid-section and he was gazing down on him fondly, Tony had one hand resting on some balcony (was that from the Maria stark foundation charity dinner?) and his back against Steve’s chest with his head resting on his shoulder.

The picture wasn’t the problem, the picture was fine. It had been taken at a public function and it was even kinda cute. No, the problem was the headline.

“ _Although living as a man, Tony Stark is still the girl in the relationship_ ”

“I’m gay, you _morons_!” He finally spit out.

Well, technically, he was bi, but he was currently in a long term relationship with another man and it was always best not to complicate things for the poor little reporters brains, the little darlings got confused so easily over that sort of stuff (that was sarcastic).

They were both men! It meant that yeah, when they hugged one of them was going to end up the little spoon and seeing as Steve was waaaaay taller and bigger than Tony…

This was such bullshit. Genders roles in general were bullshit. They literally made no sense if you got outside of what passed for “normal” even a little. Like… if you were not straight, if you were a genius, probably if you were familiar with more than one culture too, etc, and blablabla… Tony had _knew_ that. Had known that since he was a tiny little kid.

But, and that embarrassed him way more than anything the tabloid could ever say, he had kind of forgotten that. The ugly truth was, if you stripped off all the cosmetic medical stuff, transitioning was all about perception. It was about making the outside world see you as your real gender, the gender your body wasn’t, through the way you acted, the cloth you wore, hormones and surgery. And Tony had been so focused on that, on getting people to see him as male that he had allowed the opinion of others to modify-or to make him doubt- his behavior. He had felt uncomfortable and unbalanced for a whole week over acting "male enough". Well fuck it and fuck them!

Decision made, Tony strode out of his office, only remembering to tell Mrs. A that he was taking an early lunch break just as the elevator door was closing. He got out of his car 20 minutes later and into a small upscale beauty salon resting an elbow on the reception counter.

“Hi, I was wondering if you had a spot free for a manicure, like the most elaborate one you can do in 30 minutes, with the little stamped motifs and stuff,” he gestured with his hands.

The woman, who had to be in her late 30s and projected an aura of experienced professionalism blinked. “Hmm… I might be able to arrange something if you give me a minute. It would be for…”

Tony took of his sunglasses and gave her his most charming smile “Oh, it’s for me.”

 

 

 

Tony stark had been a butch girl/woman from age 4 to 34, he would be a flamboyant man from age 34 on. And those who didn’t like it could go to hell.

 

 

**************************************************************************************************

Here are links to what I imagine Tony would get:

http://www.eternalvox.net/loosepowder/2012/05/iron-man-avengers-manicure/

http://foryournailsonly.net/2010/11/super-sonic-electronic.html

nail polish is too femm for me (personnaly) and don't like the feel of it on my nails, but those are awesome enough to tempt me.


End file.
